


Atlantis: The Opening

by linaerys



Series: SGA Restaurant AU [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-08
Updated: 2006-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: Atlantis is a restaurant in Manhattan.  Rodney is the chef.linaeryswrites self-indulgent crack.  AU and not entirely linear. I know Rodney isn't a foodie in canon, but his diva-ness suggested this to me anyway.
Relationships: Carson Beckett/Rodney McKay, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: SGA Restaurant AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804396
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Atlantis: The Opening

**One.**

“Here, taste this,” says Rodney to the new bartender. Elizabeth wanted Rodney to come in early and make sure the guy got settled in for the lunch crowd. He’s younger than Sumner and much better looking, but that’s Elizabeth’s usual taste. She inherited Sumner from the previous manager and keeps on looking for ways to get rid of him—he has a few followers but would have been more suited to an old-boys’ steakhouse than a trendy restaurant like Ice.

“Hello to you too. I’m John Sheppard.”

“Whatever. Taste this.” He hands Sheppard a spoonful of truffled mashed potatoes—simple enough, but Elizabeth says that their investors are coming to dinner tonight to decide who would get to make the move to their new restaurant in the Meat Packing District, so everything has to be just perfect.

“It’s fine,” says Sheppard. Rodney rolls his eyes, and puts this one in the pretty but boring category. “But I don’t know about oregano with the truffles—doesn’t seem to be a good combination.” He shrugs. “What do I know?”

“Oregano?” says Rodney, mostly to himself. He sniffs at the spoon. Yes, there is some oregano and Rodney certainly wasn’t the one put it in there. “Kavanagh!” he bellows across the dining room, but he won’t be in this early; there is only Zelenka who pokes his head out of the kitchen and pushes up his glasses, looking annoyed.

“Rodney,” he says, “I wish you wouldn’t shout while I’m making the zabaglione. It will curdle.”

“It’s not going to curdle because I’m yelling. That’s a silly superstition.”

“It will curdle if I am distracted.” He lets the door swing close with an air of offended dignity.

Rodney looks back at Sheppard, who’s wrinkling his forehead, and laughs nervously. “Pastry chef,” says Rodney by way of explanation. “They’re always touchy.”

“Ah,” says Sheppard, nodding sagely.

“Good palate,” says Rodney. “I don’t know why I didn’t pick up the organo.” He looks at Sheppard a little too long without speaking and Sheppard gives him a little half smile. Damn it, he is really gorgeous. Trust Elizabeth to bring in another pretty one and make Rodney completely tongue-tied whenever he’s out in the dining room. Not that she lets Rodney out very often. Getting used to Lorne was hard enough, but this is a whole new level of pretty.

“Well, I have to get back to doing chef things,” he says.

“You do that.”

**Two.**

"Someone sent back the steak tartare," says Lorne. Rodney crosses his arms and scowls at Lorne. No one sends back his steak tartare. "Said it was too rare."  
  
"It's steak tartare! It's _supposed_ to be rare," yells Rodney. He hopes the corn-fed rubes in the dining room can hear him, but the place is packed and loud tonight, so there isn’t much chance of that. "It's not supposed to be cooked at all! Do you know where the name comes from? The Tartars used to put raw meat under their saddles and ride all day and at the end of the day it would be tenderized and they would eat it. Raw!"  
  
Lorne shrugs. "Elizabeth says the customer is always right. She's gonna want you to cook it."  
  
"The customer is not always right. The customer is almost always wrong. In this case the customer is _spectacularly_ wrong."  
  
"I'll do it," says Kavanagh. He takes the plate out of Lorne's hand. "And have Sheppard send over something special to the table."  
  
"What part of sous-chef do you not understand, Kavanagh?" asks Rodney. Kavanagh just gives him a look. "Fine. Burn it."

It’s a Tuesday so the last of the customers clear out around 12:30am. Rodney gives the night shift their instructions for the preparations that had to happen between closing and when Atlantis opens for lunch again at noon. Most of the night shift was transplanted from Ice, and they all know their business pretty well by now, but Rodney likes to tell them anyway.

Sheppard is chopping lemon wedges at the bar when Rodney sits down. “So, how did your first night go?” he asks.

“Lotta celebrities,” says Sheppard. “Was that really Paris Hilton in here earlier?”

“Lorne said it was Nicole Ritchie.”

“Damn it, I always get those two confused.”

“Paris is the one with the porn movie,” says Rodney through a mouthful of cocktail olives.

“I just finished restocking those,” says Sheppard.

“So get out more.”

Sheppard narrows his eyes at Rodney but it doesn’t look particularly unfriendly. “So what do you do after you close up? At my last place we usually drove down the shore to play skeeball.” He looks embarrassed.

“Your previous employer was in Jersey?” asks Rodney. Sheppard nods. “Don’t let that get around.”

“So, what do you do?”

“Sometimes I go over to Mesa. Sam Carter’s the chef there. I steal leftovers and make fun of her for putting chipotle peppers in everything.”

“I thought Bobby Flay was the chef there.”

“Say that to Carter, she’ll love it.”

“Really?”

“No.”

**Three.**  
  
"This is our new space." Elizabeth gestures widely at a broken bar, a disco ball on the ceiling, and rotted leather chairs and banquettes. "We open in one month."

The space is in the Meat Packing District, attached to Chelsea market. One of the great restaurants of the seventies was once here; a great chef made his name, and went on to write cookbooks that were probably out of print now. Since then, it hosted a collection of seedy dance clubs and even at one point a strip joint, before being abandoned entirely in the early nineties.  
  
"You have got to be kidding me," says Rodney from the kitchen. The ceiling is stained and pitted from numerous grease fires, and the tile on the floor is rotted and cracked. Cockroaches scurry across everywhere, but those always find their way into restaurants, even the very best, and Rodney is used to them by now. "There's nothing! I mean, the space is good enough, but all these appliances are from like thirty years ago."  
  
"I hate to say it, ma'am," says Lorne, "but it doesn't look likely."  
  
Elizabeth clasps her hands together, her eyes shining. She isn’t listening to anyone. "This is it. This will be the crown jewel. This is Atlantis."  
  
They bring in the designers the next day. Teyla and Ronon work as a team, and no one knows if they are lovers, brother and sister, friends, or enemies who find it more lucrative to work together than separately.  
  
Ronon takes one look at the space and grunts. Elizabeth and Rodney follow behind him as he circles the outer ring of banquettes. "Unghh," said Rodney. "What does that mean, 'unghh?'"  
  
"Not bad," says Ronon after he completes his circuit. His voice is so low Rodney thinks he can feel the soles of his feet vibrating, or maybe that’s from the termites that must be devouring the old foundation.  
  
"Not bad? How can you say that? It's terrible!"  
  
Ronon ignores him and instead says something inaudible to Teyla and makes broad motions with his hands. "Ronon thinks that long horizontal lines would be best, in grays and silvers." She looks at Ronon who nods. "The space will be punctuated by tall tapering columns that approach the ceiling but do not touch it."  
  
"Colors," says Ronon. "Blue, everywhere."  
  
"Yes," says Teyla. "Darker blue at ground level, lightening to a Caribbean blue at the ceiling. The columns will be different shades of gray."  
  
"What about the disco ball?" asks Elizabeth.  
  
"What about the--what about the disco ball? What about my kitchen?" Rodney gestures wildly. "This is such a mess, and the fact that you can't see it--."  
  
"One of the columns will be tiled in mirror," says Teyla, "as a remembrance of the restaurant before."  
  
Elizabeth nods. "Sounds good, make it so."

**Four.**

“Rodney, you were supposed to work on this.” Dr. Heightmeyer gives Rodney her best concerned look before turning to glance out the window again. It’s a beautiful day, and Dr. Heightmeyer’s fortieth floor office looks out over the south-west corner of Central Park.

“I know,” Rodney groans. “If I dislike everyone, I’m never going to settle down with a nice man. I’m trying.”

“You had a date with that nice Carson fellow, how did that go?”

Rodney rubs his forehead. “He was a mama’s boy.”

“Don’t you think that might be rushing to conclusions?”

“All he did was talk about her. Her roses. Her foot cream. It was nauseating.”

**Five.**

Rodney hates the new waitress, and he can’t figure out why until he sees her get a drink order from Sheppard at the bar and their hands brush against each other before she takes her tray and flounces over to a table of businessmen who are ordering like they're on a big expense account. She can swing her hips and carry a tray of martinis without spilling, which makes Rodney both awed and annoyed.

Atlantis has a half-open kitchen, which Rodney hated at first, but he can still yell at Kavanagh in the back, and it means that everyone keeps their space a lot cleaner. It also means that Rodney can watch how the meals are going over with the patrons. Rodney has to admit that it’s fun to see who becomes their regular customers, and it’s never who Rodney expects.

“This is Chaya,” says Sheppard when Rodney’s going over the specials for the night. All the waiters get a taste, and Chaya licks the dill cream for the poached salmon off her fingers suggestively when some drips down her fork. Sheppard doesn’t need to know the specials, but he likes to, and he always hangs around anyway. Rodney started to think it was for him, but maybe he just likes the food.

Elizabeth is supposed to run new wait-staff past him, so Rodney would be fuming no matter who it was, but Chaya is dusky and beautiful and has a low seductive voice, and Sheppard can’t seem to take his eyes off her.

That night Sheppard doesn’t want to come with Rodney on their usual crawl of the area restaurants and trade stories and recipes of the day. Everyone tries to one-up each other with the antics of the customers, and insults the others' cooking and it's great way to wind down from the day, but it's no fun without Sheppard.

Rodney realizes halfway home that he left his keys in his locker and he turns around to go back and get them. There are strange noises coming from the pantry, and all the prep guys look way too innocent. Rodney looks in the high window on the door and sees Sheppard going down on Chaya on top of one of the fifty-pound sacks of rice. From her reactions it looks like he’s doing a good job, but Chaya’s pretty enough she’s probably a WAM (waitress-actress-model) and she might just be rehearsing a big scene.

Rodney swings the door to the pantry forward into Sheppard’s foot to see if he can’t distract them a little, but either they both like an audience, which wouldn’t surprise Rodney one bit, or they’re too into it to care.

**Six.**

Rodney hardly sleeps at all for the three weeks before Atlantis opens. He still works a full six-day shift at Ice, although there’s a day chef to handle lunch. Every moment that he isn’t working, he’s planning dishes for the opening. Zelenka wants to make some towering monstrosity out of spun sugar as the centerpiece of the opening night party, and he’s even roped Elizabeth into his delusions.

“Dessert is so over,” says Rodney, as they pace around the new space. Teyla and Ronon have brought in contractors, possibly the only contractors in all of New York City who can get things done on time. Rodney has to admit that it looks good, and the blue and gray interior makes a nice change from the stark white of Ice.

“Dessert is over because everyone has gone low-carb,” Rodney continues.

“I heard there's an anti-Atkins backlash,” says Elizabeth.

Rodney snorts. Elizabeth certainly doesn’t look like she ever consumes carbohydrates. She has that tightness in her face that might be from an early mini-facelift or might be from fast living. “Don’t believe the hype. Steak, seafood, that’s what’s going to sell this place, not Zelenka’s desserts.” Elizabeth raises one eyebrow. “As lovely as they are.”

“Fine. Have your menus to me by tomorrow and we can start to talk about budget.”

“I thought you were charging three hundred dollars a head for this thing.”

“That won’t stretch very far if you want to put truffles in everything, Rodney.”

“I do not want to put truffles in everything. I’m not a first year CIA graduate anymore.” Elizabeth smirks at him. “I only did that once, plus we had a surplus.”

“Fine. But I need to know what you want to serve by tomorrow so we can order everything in time.”

Rodney walks back into the kitchen to check on how the renovations were going in there. Rodney drew his dream-kitchen designs and it appears that the contractors aren’t taking too many liberties with them. There is a nice-sized sauce station, a plating area, two food processors, a long magnetic strip for knives, shelves perfectly within arm’s reach where the stacks of frying pans will be after they move in, and above that a board of hooks to hang other pots on. Rodney nods and a slow smile creeps across his face. He turns to find Elizabeth standing behind him.

“This might work,” he says. Then he looks up behind Elizabeth’s head and sees an odd buckling and swelling to the drywall behind her. It looks like the wall is sweating—yes, and even as he watches water starts to bead out of the surface. “What the hell is that?”

Elizabeth spins around and takes quick stock of the situation. “Teyla,” she yes. “Ronon! Get in here.” Ronon comes running in, his dred-locks streaming behind him. Rodney sees Elizabeth’s throat work as she tries to swallow her anger. “What is that?”

“Oh, crap,” says Ronon. He rushes out again.

“Crap is right,” says Rodney. “We’re going to be flooded.” Pieces of the drywall start to break away as they wash and crumble down, then a thin trickle of water starts pouring out of the wall and running down the slanted floor into the drain in the middle of the kitchen.

Rodney and Elizabeth walk out into the dining room again, and now that Rodney knows what to look for, he sees similar things happening at various points along the seam where the ceiling meets the walls. “This is very bad,” says Elizabeth. “We’re going to be sunk before we open.” She pauses. “No pun intended.”

**Seven.**

“He’s _straight_ ,” says Rodney, and he says it like it’s a dirty word. “I guess I got spoiled living in Chelsea where if you see someone that gorgeous, they’re probably gay.”

“Would you like him so much if he were gay?” Dr. Heightmeyer asks.

“Haven’t you been to the restaurant? Because I can totally get you a reservation if not, and then you can take a look at him. I know it’s really hard to get into, but knowing the chef, that counts for something.”

“You know I couldn’t accept that. Anyway, I’m vegan.”

Rodney blanches. “You mean for four years I’ve been telling all my secrets to a vegan? How can you possibly appreciate what I do for a living when you deny all that is good in food?”

“Can we get back to the subject of your crush on the bartender, Rodney?”

“I don’t think we can, now. Really? Vegan?” And Rodney always thought she had such good taste.

**Eight.**

“Fucking everyone is kind of the job description of the bartender, Rodney,” says Elizabeth gently. Rodney glares at her, because now he thinks it’s a fair bet Sheppard gave her a ride, too.

“Well he’s not fucking me!”

“Is _that_ the problem?” asks Elizabeth. “I’m not going to fire Chaya. If I did I'd have to fire both of them.”

“It’s distracting,” says Rodney. “Not the—the other thing. They were doing it in the pantry.” Elizabeth hides a smile behind her fingers and now Rodney is _sure_ that she had a go with Sheppard and in the same place, too.

**Nine.**

“What was it?” asks Elizabeth when they go back to the Atlantis building. Teyla and Ronon still look pretty, but dirty and sweaty too, since they’ve been working around the clock.

“When the city turned on the water to the restaurant we discovered several pipes that led to an old fountain system,” said Teyla.

“What can we do?” asks Elizabeth.

“We can cap them, but that is only a temporary solution. The best thing to do would be to rip up the floors and take out the pipe diversions.” Behind Teyla, Ronon stands like a giant, immoveable wall. Rodney wants to ask him if he’s ever considered working as a bouncer, but he probably has, and won't appreciate the question.

“But that will take millions of dollars, and much more time than we have,” says Elizabeth.

“Or you can restore the fountains. It might be exactly the right solution. The water will cascade down the walls and provide a soothing effect. The drains are already there.”

Elizabeth nods slowly. “I like it.”

“Tile, behind the water,” says Ronon.

“Does he ever speak in complete sentences?” asks Rodney.

“He does not have to,” says Teyla. The look she gives Rodney isn’t exactly a glare, but it isn’t friendly either.

“How long will it take?” That’s Elizabeth, focused on the practicalities.

“I know a tile specialist. We will bring him in tomorrow to do the work. You will lose no time.”

Elizabeth heaves a sigh of relief. “So we’re really going to be okay?”

“The original designers were very . . . prescient,” says Teyla. “They designed this waterfall system to last for a very long time.”  
  
“I don’t want a waterfall in the kitchen,” says Rodney.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Ronon, like it's an order, not like he intends to fix anything.

**Ten.**

“Where’s Chaya?” asks Rodney, when they go over specials for the night.

“She got deported back to Brazil,” says Elizabeth. “The terms of her visa didn’t involve working. Do you know who reported her to INS?” She looks accusingly at Rodney.

“Hey, it wasn’t me,” says Rodney. Not that he wasn’t tempted, but they never inquire too closely into the backgrounds of their employees. It’s a cash business and everyone has their reasons for liking it that way.

“Can’t we sponsor her or something?” asks Sheppard.

Elizabeth raises an eyebrow at him, which most people know means “shut the fuck up.” Sheppard’s learned that one, apparently, because he doesn’t say anything, just pouts for a nanosecond so Rodney can see how sexy that expression looks on him. Then he takes a taste of the Maple Glazed Pork Spare-Ribs, and makes orgasm faces and noises. “This is really good, Rodney,” he says, and Rodney has to forgive him everything.

After dinner Sheppard’s his old self, and Rodney sits and has a beer. He’d never cop to it in a _Time Out_ interview, where they want him to talk about paring Sauternes with cheese (and Rodney puts in a plug for the new ice wines coming out of upper Ontario), but he really just likes to have a Labatt’s sometimes.

“I just got my Honda out of the shop,” says Sheppard. “You want to go out to Jones Beach tomorrow in the morning.”

“I burn really easily,” says Rodney.

“Oh come on. I read Anthony Bourdain got all his best recipe ideas on the beach.”

“I read that too. Doing coke and lying on the beach. But how hard is it to come up with new idea for a _steak frites_ joint? There’s only so many ways you can burn a steak.”

“Maybe you can skip the coke. You’re high-strung enough.” Sheppard raises one eyebrow at Rodney, a move Rodney wishes he could do. One of Rodney's eyebrows is naturally higher than the other, but he it’s not something he does on purpose.

**Eleven.**

“All seafood for the opening, I see,” says Elizabeth when Rodney hands her the menu.

“Yes, that’s what you asked for, and you see, the Carpaccio is Tuna Belly, which is cheaper.”

“Is that going to play? Are people going to like it?”

“Sure, just call it Toro and everyone will love it. And I’ve done wine pairings too.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” says Elizabeth. “We’re bringing in a sommelier for the opening.”

“Oh.” His face falls. “Who is it?”

“Laura Cadman.”

“A woman sommelier?”

“She’s won awards,” says Elizabeth coldly. “The only reason we’re not keeping her on full time is because she’s too expensive.”

“If you fire her, then I can afford real tuna?”

“We’re not firing her.”

**Twelve.**

“He asked me to go to the beach with him. Do straight guys ask other guys to go to the beach?”

“Yes, Rodney,” says Dr. Heightmeyer, “they do.” She seems very impatient today and this, coupled with the revelation of her being a vegan makes Rodney strongly consider finding another shrink. “Last time you said you were going to go on another date with Carson.”

“Well, he kept on calling me. And that accent is kind of sexy.”

“How did it go?”

“Not too bad. He’s a pretty good kisser.”

**Thirteen.**

Elizabeth storms into the kitchen. “Do you mind?” says Rodney without turning around. “The opening starts in thirty minutes and half the sauces aren’t done, the vegetables aren’t blanched, and if someone doesn’t defrost some fish stock and I mean now--.”

“Sumner’s quit.” Elizabeth sounds broken. “We can’t open without a bartender.”

“Get Cadman to do it. Can’t you see I’m busy? People pay more attention to the food than the booze at these things.”

“That’s only if they can get booze. I can’t have the sommelier behind the bar.”

“So get the new guy, Sheppard. What am I supposed to do about this?”

“Some sympathy might be nice, Rodney. Anyway, this is his fault.”

“How is it his fault?” Rodney asks while he tastes various sauces. The tropical fruit compote for the salmon needs more vinegar.

“He says Sumner was complaining about spending too much time on his feet and his girlfriend wanted him to spend more time at home, and suddenly John brings up a bartending school that’s hiring up in Westchester.”

“He’ll never get the job. Sumner could never deal with a bunch of snot-nosed wannabe student bartenders.”

“He got the job.”

“Then bring Sheppard over here.”

“I fired him, too.”

“Then un-fire him.”

“Some help you are, Rodney.” She walks out of the kitchen again.

She finds Sheppard in time, though, because he’s out behind the bar, a gorgeous long piece of stone that looks like obsidian, and God only knows where Teyla and Ronon found that, looking sheepish and running his fingers through his hair to make sure it stands up even more on end than usual.

“Uh, I’m sorry about that,” he’s saying to Elizabeth when Rodney comes over to give his instructions for the evening. “I was trying to help him out, not shoot you in the back.”

Elizabeth cocks her head to one side. “Just make tonight a success and all is forgiven.”

**Fourteen.**

Tonight at the opening they have the cream of every wait-staff Rodney’s ever worked with. There’s the head waiter Lorne, self-effacing, efficient and polite as always. He’s got a sly wit that always diffuses uncomfortable situations and he can seat people so that everyone thinks they’ve got the best seat in the house.

Parrish is here too. He looks like a big goof, but he’s great at helping the more intimidated customers order something they’ll like—that won’t be needed tonight, though, this crowd knows what they’re doing. Peter Grodin is a new guy, but Elizabeth says he’s good with the rude customers, knows when to cave and when to stand firm, and when to spit in someone’s food, not that he’d ever admit to it.

Cadman stands off to the side as Rodney goes through the dishes on the tasting menu. She chose the wines to go with them and Rodney can’t find fault with her pairings, although he’d like to.

Then the doors open and everything starts. Rodney’s on his feet barking out orders and running around the kitchen. He gets a few new burns on his hands searing tuna and flambéing Crepes Suzette, which Zelenka is supposed to be doing, but he’s putting the finishing touches on a giant Croquembouche. Rodney doesn’t mind too much, although he swears and throws a frying pan at Kavanagh for knocking into the stove him the first time, because those are his battle scars and maybe Sheppard will be impressed by them.

Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins show up, although they bring their kids with them and the younger ones play under the table and get on everyone’s nerves.

Rodney comes out to meet the _New York Magazine_ style writer, who got yet another of the many comped tickets they gave out tonight. She’s a slight young woman named Katie Brown. Cadman doesn’t let him do much of the talking—Rodney wonders if maybe Cadman is buttering her up for more than just a good review, although that’s not really his business—but she seems to like Rodney okay, and she says that the Pear and Gorgonzola Torte appetizer was delicious.

**Fifteen.**

“I got Carson a ticket to the opening.”

“Oh yes?” says Dr. Heightmeyer. “I forgot to ask. How did the opening go?”

“Not too bad, all things considered.”

“Did Carson have a good time?”

“I think so. I thought he’d bring his mother, but he brought a friend. Some guy named Michael.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“Michael? I hope not. He was a bit of a cold fish.”

“I mean Carson.”

“I think so.”

**Sixteen.**

The evening is wrapping up around two in the morning when Chuck, one of the busboys, comes into the kitchen. “McKay, there’s a man out here, calls himself Kolya? He wants to know if we want to buy wholesale Sevruga Caviar. Says he can get us a really good deal as long as we get all our fish from him.”

“Sevruga, huh?” says Rodney. “Chuck, I’m going to give you a little free advice. When a man comes to the back of your restaurant at two in the morning offering deals on caviar, he’s in the Russian mafia. Truffles or steak, he’s Italian.”

Chuck looks bashful. “Uh, I guess you’re right, McKay.”

“It doesn’t mean we can’t do business with him. It just means we have to be careful.”


End file.
